LARRY McMURTRY is closely identified with Texas. All six of his novels and a collection of essays (In a Narrow Grave) reflect life in his native state. Born 3 June 1936 in Wichita Falls, he was educated in Texas, receiving a B.A. from North Texas State University in 1958 and an M.A. from Rice in 1960. A Stegner Fellowship enabled him to do further graduate work at Stanford, but he returned to Texas to teach creative writing at Rice from 1963 to 1969. Since then he has left the academic world and Texas to live in Washington, D.C., where he owns a rare book store called Booked-Up.

Houston and the fictional town of Thalia recur frequently as settings in the six novels, and some of the same characters, Emma Horton, Patsy Carpenter, and Danny Deck, reappear in several different books. He has developed his stories in a number of different modes...